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Everything You Need to Know About Edmonton: June 1 and 2

The Wanderer Online provides Edmontonians with a daily recap of the last day in news. Our long-form – and sometimes irreverent and witty – recaps will keep you up-to-date with the latest happenings across the city. Enjoy and stay tuned.

It’s already June 3. ALREADY JUNE 3?! How is this possible? Edmonton is now into its “summer” phase, where we don t-shirts and experience the odd rainy day, as was the case on June 2. Grey skies and loads of rain are not the extent of June’s offerings, however. To begin the month, Edmonton has been replete with interesting events and some important news stories.

We begin with The Local Good 100, which held two days of leadership retreats over the June 1-2 weekend. Hosted by a small team of enthusiastic and driven “savvy do-gooders,” The Local Good brought together about 70 leaders from various Edmonton communities. Though there were plenty of weekend highlights, this is certainly one of them. As part of the second day post-lunch session, Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon performed this breathtaking poem about Edmonton, inspired by the words of Lewis Cardinal. It is worth the read!

On June 2, the Digital Alberta Awards took place at the Royal Alberta Museum, where 16 finalists were chosen out of a field of 100+ finalists. Among the winners were Orest Nazarewycz’s Jetpack Kitty, under the student category; Make Something Edmonton (Lift Interactive Inc.) and BeauCoo for best digital start-up. You can see the full list of winners, here.

In very recent news, Jane Batty of Ward 6 has declared that she will not run in the upcoming city council elections. This marks the end of her four-term (12-year) period as representative of Ward 6. Batty, who was mentioned repeatedly at the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts as a persistent (and highly-successful) thorn in Mandel’s side, will endorse Karen Leibovici if she is to run.

And in province-wide politics news, Dave Cournoyer posted an article on Daveberta.ca, where he remarks that maintaining a national and international presence seems more important to Redford and her cabinet than doing so within Alberta. This sentiment is captured when Cournoyer writes “There is certainly value in government leaders travelling internationally, but in Alberta’s case, the perception has become that the Premier is more comfortable travelling outside of Alberta than dealing with the day-to-day domestic issues in the province.”